it's hard to take the UN seriously when it's all them over there *vague hand wave*

Lol.
Many people seem to forget how big some places are. For instance, New Zealand has a population of less than half of my state alone. With that much of an area and this size of a populace, you will have massive variations of prejudices, thought processes, morals and ideals. What people in New York think vs what people in Alabama think vs what people in Oregon think as far as politics, family style, morals, etc are MUCH more dispersed than the differences between Auckland and Invercargill.
So painting anything that has to do with what people think, want, mean, pay attention to across the entire nation is using an awful large brush. And its wrong.

I believe I was the one who made the original statement in Gadsie's post. What I meant by not taking them seriously is that most Americans either A) have no idea they exist B) are vaguely familiar with them but couldn't careless. Others love them, others hate them but most just shrug. As such, when Gadsie was speaking about food laws enforced worldwide, I asked enforced by who, the UN? And said, that Americans would not take them seriously assuming they tried to push some agenda. America ignores them (rightly) on Kyoto, ignores them every time Iran's Mouthpiece gets up and speaks, and basically ignores everything they say.

That said, why would you take a body seriously that expects America to foot most of the bill while appointing countries like Iran, Libya, and Somalia to a council on human rights. That is like making foxes members of the chicken coop committee on chicken safety. Also, when a UN Soldier writes an email to his family saying he is about to die because Hezbollah/Hamas (I do not recall which) is using their UN outpost as a place to launch attacks on Israel and it is a matter of time until the Israeli's bomb it, how do you take them seriously as peacekeepers? The UN is frankly rather a laughable body. They seem to spend most of their time complaining that richer countries are evil while trying to exploit them for money.

It's basically a way for smaller countries to do what the larger countries want without being explicitly dominated by the larger countries. See: coalition of the willing.

Sometimes the same tactics get used on larger countries (basically, the permanent members of the security council) and boy do they get PISSED when that happens.

Originally Posted by namelesswonder

I would agree that most Americans seem primarily focused on domestic/immediate/local issues.

Yeah, this is true of pretty much people everywhere, but I do agree that american media seems to be very insular. I remember my first day in america, I saw 6 chewing gum commercials in the first hour of TV, and america was spoken of almost reverently as if it was the whole world ("every day, all across America.....").

I seem to see several appeals to america's authority/autonomy by virtue of it's wealth in this thread....

Lol.
Many people seem to forget how big some places are. For instance, New Zealand has a population of less than half of my state alone. With that much of an area and this size of a populace, you will have massive variations of prejudices, thought processes, morals and ideals. What people in New York think vs what people in Alabama think vs what people in Oregon think as far as politics, family style, morals, etc are MUCH more dispersed than the differences between Auckland and Invercargill.
So painting anything that has to do with what people think, want, mean, pay attention to across the entire nation is using an awful large brush. And its wrong.

Hence I was asking each individual, yo. MDA is the only access I have to a wide plethora of Americans

"I think the basic anti-aging diet is also the best diet for prevention and treatment of diabetes, scleroderma, and the various "connective tissue diseases." This would emphasize high protein, low unsaturated fats, low iron, and high antioxidant consumption, with a moderate or low starch consumption.

In practice, this means that a major part of the diet should be milk, cheese, eggs, shellfish, fruits and coconut oil, with vitamin E and salt as the safest supplements."

I don't even take the US Congress seriously. Doesn't the UN pay us to send soldiers to other countries and kill people or some such? The building has pretty flags. Oh, and maybe sometimes they go look for stuff. *chuckle*

"Right is right, even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it." - St. Augustine

Thomas Jefferson said it best, “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations...entangling alliances with none.”

We should not be in the UN. We should have no part in the UN, it's resolutions, "peace keeping" missions, etc. But we also shouldn't be bombing people in Pakistan with drones, installing puppet dictators, and orchestrating trade embargoes to countries just because we disagree with them. Sadly, no one listens to me.

The demographic I hear the most noise from (conservative homeschoolers) regarding the UN considers that body a threat. This conservative slice of America believes that political currents are afoot that would make UN policy the law of the land, superseding our Constitution, most especially in regard to the powers of the state versus the rights of parents to direct the lives of their minor children as they see fit.

In that regard, these parents and concerned individuals take the UN very seriously; not in what the UN (without US participation, that is) could "do" to the US, but that mostly through our own negligence and ignorance we will sign some agreement that would put us under the governance of non-Americans who would restrict freedoms such as we currently have. Otherwise, nobody here ever, ever brings the UN up - they are mostly engaged in talk about the Bill of Rights / Constitution.

I have a mantra that I have spouted for years... "If I eat right, I feel right. If I feel right, I exercise right. If I exercise right, I think right. If I think right, I eat right..." Phil-SC

I honestly have no idea what the UN does. I think what you will find most from the common American is general ignorance and apathy for things beyond their immediate sphere. :P We are a rather self-absorbed group, concerned primarily with our own lives and our own country. It seems we think most about other countries only when they are infringing upon us in some way (via out sourcing of jobs, withholding of resources like oil, as examples) or being considered as possible travel destinations.

I personally take very little interest in politics, be it national or global. I have enough on my plate without that. I think for a lot of us, the degree to which we are affected by political doings seems very slight. We don't have a Really Big Picture view. I know that new laws may affect me tomorrow, but they don't affect me today, and I have pressing concerns that Do affect me today, so that is where my mind is.